La Fille Mal Gardée (1789) leads off Cyril Beaumont’s indispensable 1000-page reference to the first 150 years of European ballet. Like many classic works that followed it, La Fille survived till Beaumont’s time by way of successive reworkings, each preserving elements of previous productions and inserting new ideas. Beaumont’s 1938 libretto sounds quite authentic, though no one by that time could have known exactly what the original Jean Dauberval ballet looked like.

In fact, the Fille we recognize now as the real thing is quite modern. Frederick Ashton choreographed it in 1960 for the Royal Ballet, and one of its greatest interpreters, Alexander Grant, supervised the staging that returned to Boston Ballet last week after a three-year absence.

Boston Ballet doesn’t maintain a repertory of standards except for The Nutcracker, but La Fille Mal Gardée deserves to be performed more consistently here. Despite Ashton’s Anglicized rendering of the French subject, the ballet retains its flavor as an early work. It predates the Imperial-period Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and the Romantic-era Giselle and La Sylphide. It’s a story of simple folk and simpletons, who’ve never seen a king or a princess, never imagined fairy godmothers or menacing trolls. They understand three things: work, money, and love.

This poses a very different performing situation, at least for an American ballet company in the 21st century. Today’s dancers know how to wear splendid costumes and behave nobly, with superb technique exemplifying social order. Ashton asks something else of them: they have to create a community that enjoys itself. The main characters scheme to protect their families and their property, but neither magic nor monarchy controls the outcome.

A prosperous widow wants to make an advantageous match for her daughter, despite the fact that the prospective groom is missing more than a few marbles. Lise stages a whole repertory of tricks to evade her mother’s beady eye and rendezvous with her boyfriend Colas. In the end, it’s the mother who unwittingly defeats the unsuitable betrothal by being overprotective. Lise and Colas get her blessing at last.

The corps of farmer friends form the usual lines and background framing for the principal dancers, but they also produce important group designs and circle-dance romps. They dance for one another and with one another, not solely for the audience. Ashton’s ingenious choreography requires real cooperation.

The men dance around in a ring, bonking sticks together in precise rhythm. The women construct pinwheels, geometrics, and a pony cart with pink satin ribbons. They all celebrate around a Maypole, weaving a mesh at the top of the pole with the ribbons they hold. Four women back up the Widow Simone’s clog dance with a collective call-and-response pattern. By the time they all rollick away singing at the end, you’re convinced they must have been having as much fun as you have for the past two hours.

Spring boards As the winter wind makes fast tracks, it leaves a burgeoning crop of ancient masterpieces, world premieres, farces, and musicals to blossom come April.

New & newish Helen Pickett’s Etesian , which opened Boston Ballet’s “Grand Slam” program of contemporary works last Thursday, began with a lone dancer adrift on a sea of darkness.

Sleeper The Sleeping Beauty that I saw Sunday afternoon was better than that Swan Lake , but at a top price of $85 in a town with one of America’s best ballet companies, these visits remain a dodgy proposition.

Who's who It’s never easy for a touring dance company to imprint its identity on audiences with just one program.

Christmas packages Some of us cringe at the very word Nutcracker , but there are alternatives — and even the Real Thing comes in many flavors.

Fusions and effusions Performed on the chapel lawn at Concord Academy a week ago Thursday, Anna Myer’s All at Once utilized a sculptural, gestural movement idiom, but it looked more like a ballet than a modern dance.

JOFFREY BALLET GETS ITS DUE | May 08, 2012 New York has two great ballet companies, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Any other ballet troupe that wants to put down roots there has to develop a personality that's distinct from those two.

THE BOSTON BALLET’S DON QUIXOTE | May 01, 2012 In the long string of ballet productions extracted from Miguel de Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, the delusional Don has become a minor character, charging into situations where he shouldn't go and causing trouble instead of good works.